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Five Beliefs You've Got Horribly Wrong About LinkedIn

Founder of Selling Made Social: Coaching entrepreneurs on how to turn LinkedIn™ into a non-stop, lead generating Sales Funnel!

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LinkedIn is gaining more traction in the entrepreneurial world. Finally, people are waking up to the basic fact that LinkedIn has gone far beyond an online CV depository and is now your online business reputation.

Have you noticed, just like the old adage that all roads lead to Rome, all Google searches seem to lead to LinkedIn? Unless you are a John Smith, try Googling your name and title/job or company and see what it shows. For the majority of people, the first result will be your LinkedIn profile. Why? One has to remember that LinkedIn is a grandfather of the internet. As social media platforms go, it’s been live since May 5, 2003. That’s old in internet years, and if you hadn’t noticed, Google loves it. It has been indexed like mad, meaning your presence and activity there is being tracked by Google and will allow you to show up ranked on a Google search.

Even with the plethora of LinkedIn trainers and courses out there, I am seeing such poor development in the way professionals are utilizing the platform. There is not enough innovation of strategies that can lay on top of the platform and result in tremendous results for those entrepreneurs and business owners in the B2B space. Here are five of the biggest beliefs that you need to weed out right away and start to see LinkedIn in a new light.

1. Your profile is a static online CV.

First, get rid of it if you have copied and pasted your CV onto LinkedIn. It's time to change it to a client-facing promotional page that talks directly about the outcomes you client avatars can expect when they work with you. Did you also notice that you can actually easily and quickly move your experience sections around on the profile? If you are then creating your LinkedIn as a promotional page, you can move these sections to reflect what you want a particular set of people to see first when they actually land on your page. Why not show them the good stuff first? This is particularly useful when you have multiple offerings and are doing proactive outreach. Simply shift your profile experience sections around to match the avatars you are attempting to engage.

2. Your profile can only have one offer.

This is a fallacy. In today’s online landscape, many people are offering multiple services and products. We are used to seeing multiple options, and this should be no different with your expertise. If you are indeed offering two or more services/products on LinkedIn, you most certainly can reveal them to your client avatars on LinkedIn. You need to structure your profile in a clear way, but one of the easiest ways to reframe is to think about outcomes. What outcomes do your services provide? Use this to tie it all together as a coherent promotional profile page. For example, if you are offering different but complementary services (e.g., website development and lead generation), you can showcase both of these services on your LinkedIn profile and tie them together in the story you weave in your summary and experience sections as providing “online marketing services.” You don’t have to select one or the other. And using the strategy in tip one should allow you get the impact you need.

3. On LinkedIn, communication has to bebusiness-like (aka, boring).

This belief is so strong. When was the last time you received a message that didn't say, "Let’s connect for our mutual benefit," or something similar? Start to communicate on LinkedIn as you do in real life. If you were at a networking event and you saw a man in a neon pink suit and top hat, would you walk up to him and say, "Nice to meet you, let’s get to know each other for our mutual benefit”? Absolutely not. I know what I am asking: “Man, where did you get that neon suit? It’s awesome!” Do you think he would talk to me? I'd bet he would. So why, on LinkedIn, once you connect to a person, do you ignore the neon pink suit the profiles hide in plain sight? You have so many data points once you connect that there is no excuse for "business boring."

4. You must create 'value.'

This is a belief that is perpetuated by marketers. It goes along the theme of, "Give value to people first, before asking for the sale." This explains the emails I get daily that include a link to a pdf, a video I should watch or scheduler where I can pick a time for a “15-minute quick chat.” You, my friend, just did a “value vomit” in my inbox. I did not ask for it, and you never took that time to build any rapport with me to even discover one challenge I face right now. It's only value when someone asks for it and it solves a problem they asked for help with. Think about it: Are you guilty of the value vomit and wondering why your conversion rate is less than 5% on LinkedIn?

5. Automation is the key.

It certainly is, hence the explosion of all these tools coming to market that promise the magic key to success on LinkedIn. I want you to look at it like this: If you currently drive a 1985 Toyota and, frankly, are a poor driver, will putting you in a Ferrari suddenly make you an F1 driver? Of course it won't. The same is true with your LinkedIn strategies. If they are performing poorly now, doing them quicker with automation just means you get to annoy more people and get fewer results faster. Start with a strategy first, then work on automation to scale.

Founder of Selling Made Social: Coaching entrepreneurs on how to turn LinkedIn™ into a non-stop, lead generating Sales Funnel!